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Google Testing a Radical Change By Turning People's Search Results Black (telegraph.co.uk)
Google may have plans to do a visual tweak to its search results. The company appears to be testing black search result links since the weekend, according to multiple reports. While some users are pleased with this tweak, many users have already posted their grievances on Google help forums. Some users note that it has become hard to tell which links they have already clicked. The Telegraph reports: Google puts a lot of thought into the exact colours it uses in its services -- and for a good reason. A few years ago its A/B test of different shades of blue -- nicknamed "50 shades of blue" -- earned the company an extra $200 million (£138 million). Designers at Google couldn't decide between two different blues, so they decided to test 41 shades between each blue to see which users preferred. In the test, Google showed each shade to one per cent of its users, and found that users were more likely to click on a slightly more purple shade.
"I really feel like I'm frenemies with #Google. Black links instead of blue in the search results? No. Just No. Bad Google. Bad Google."
We really need a new mental health initiative in this country.
Once you go black, you never go back.
Or forward, since you can't tell where the link is.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
How do we know it's a link if it's the same color as the text? The whole point of hypertext is that links are called out visually.
That black links matter.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Each one had a sample size of 1% of their user base, which is probably a larger sample size than all human-research studies published in a given year combined. I'm betting that when you plot colors on an axis against user behavior, it makes a nice curve too.
Why would any of those deviations matter if one distinct color was in fact statistically significant in what people liked? So people preferred that one color across a range of devices and deviations. If it's statistically significant, why would Google care about the deviations?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
how color accurate are pc, mac and tablet display colors?
answer: TOTALLY NOT THE SAME. even on the same model.
Which is why you do field testing.
It doesn't matter now recently you calibrated your reference monitor, the resolution you display them at, or how precise your systems are in the lab. It doesn't matter if Google put in 0x0000FF and Joe Sixpack's crappy old VGA CRT displayed red text. By putting the changes out in front of millions of users, they got the average of all the devices and all the users. The color each specific monitor displays isn't important - what the entire collection of users responded to most is what's important.
John
Here, I gave you one of mine,,, Oh dang, now I can't moderate this thread...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
For good or bad, executives and marketers "care" about fads; and things like helpful shading and visually-distinct hyperlinks have been falling by the wayside (at least for "main" site pages). Earth is run Ferengi's, not Vulcans. Form over function; get used to it.
Table-ized A.I.
So what does that make you?
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?